


Punishment is lame, but it comes.

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [7]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 14:18:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3695492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little summary of what the word <i>punishment</i> has meant in Leo's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punishment is lame, but it comes.

**Author's Note:**

> A little _The Story so far..._ I need it every now and then.

As a kid, Leo never really _cared_ about behaving, but he had a built-in fear of punishments and being scolded, and so he did everything he could to avoid both things – and that at the age of six meant behaving and doing what he was told. It was annoying, but he preferred it to the humiliation of being lectured in front of his parents' friends or his classmates at school, which was the thing he hated the most in the whole world.  
So, Kurt and David had it really easy for a while. He was a very polite, really quiet kid, who rarely made too much noise. He and Adam would play for hours in Leo's room – the fact that their favorite thing to do together was playing video games helped – and Kurt would only check in on them once or twice during the afternoon, mostly to bring them snacks or drinks.

Leo can only remember one time when he made his father really mad.  
He was playing with his ball inside the house and refusing to take the game outside for some reason he can't quite remember right now. Maybe it had rained and the grass was wet. Anyway, he was throwing the ball, knocking over some of his action figures, placed at the end of the hall like pins. Bowling was something he had just discovered and, as any other new thing, it had quickly become his new goal in life. Hung up his helmet, he was no longer going to be a pilot, but a professional bowling player. And he would swear to everybody that they were a thing. The hall was perfect to play because it was long and narrow like a bowling alley. Unfortunately, it was also the place Kurt had chosen to display this horrible modern vase he had bought at an auction the week before. His father had told him not to play inside ten times already, so it was only a matter of time before the disaster. Eventually, the vase fell and broke into a million pieces. Leo was so scared, knowing that there was no escape from his father's wrath, that he couldn't even move. When Kurt rushed over, he found him standing right next to the mess, the ball in his hand and the first words of an useless apology on his lips. It was pointless. He was dead wrong, and Kurt had all the right in the world to scream at him. And scream he did. So much that David came running downstairs, fearing a murder or something like that.

Dave's presence saved him the spanking, but he was grounded and banned from seeing Adam outside of school, which was the worst punishment Kurt could come up with. Adam was more than a brother to Leo, he was an appendage, a part of his own body. His father had practically condemned him to have his arm cut off, forcing him to live without it for a month. A month. It was like _eternity_. Having taken after his father in almost everything, Leo had a flair for drama, so he let himself go, giving up on life – as much as a kid can give up on life – and that should have said something about his way of dealing with losses. Suddenly every game had lost his charm. Nothing was fun anymore without Adam.  
It were the longest thirty days of his life.

Unfortunately for his parents, his teenage years weren't as easy as his childhood had been. Puberty hit hard. Or better, Blaine hit, which was way worse than puberty itself would have been. Leo was a pretty standard teenager – moody, easily obsessed with pop culture personalities and items, with the tendency to dramatize any minor mishap in his everyday life – but, from Kurt and Dave's point of view no doubt, he turned into the spawn of hell when Blaine eased him into knowing and embracing his sexuality, so to speak. His parents really believe that Blaine messed up his perception of reality – and in a way he probably did – but the real truth is that, up to that moment, Kurt and Dave hadn't had the need to tell Leo no, and when they started, Leo found out that he didn't like to be told no. Simple as that.

At first, sex with Blaine was just thrilling, and he would see no reason why he should stop having it. Leo is one of those people that, once initiate to something, can't be stopped. He's thirty five now, and his sex drive is pretty much the same it was when he was fifteen. So, Blaine virtually opened a Pandora's box with him. But instead of releasing all evil of humanity, he released a sexual life too active for a man his age, which can also be considered _evil_ somehow.  
But what was only sex turned into love, real love, one so strong and so totalizing that Leo would listen to no reason. He couldn't understand his parents' concerns about his relationship with a man twenty years older than him and he would read their every act against them as mean and a result of Kurt's jealousy. At some point it wasn't even a question of what they said to him anymore. He didn't listen. If they were against Blaine, then he would not do what they said.

Punishments changed, of course. Forbidding him to see Adam wouldn't work anymore. Not that he wasn't still attached at the hip with him – they were actually closer than ever before – but they had learned how to live apart now, since they had different schedules and also different interests. Leo knew nobody could replace him in Adam's heart, even if he stayed away from him a month or two. This possibility wasn't scary anymore. The worst punishment his parents could come up with was keeping him from seeing Blaine. Now, _that_ was unacceptable to Leo because Blaine was a grown man, with a life elsewhere, and possibly hundreds of men ready to take his place in Blaine's heart. A small place indeed, since he was only a kid.

His parents tried to keep them apart, but it never really worked. The mere idea of skipping a date with Blaine was so dreadful to Leo that he would do anything to see the man. He even went as far as escaping from the window of his bedroom, aided by Blaine himself, who was reckless enough to be amused by this Romeo and Juliet scenario, when he should have probably been wiser than that. Eventually, Kurt and Dave stopped trying, because they realized there was no point in grounding him over and over and having him calling two hours later from the man's house. Being against Blaine would lead to Leo always siding with him no matter what, even when when he probably wouldn't have if his parents hadn't been so stubborn. Unfortunately, when Kurt and Dave realized that, it was too late, and there was no turning back. The rift between him and them was too deep and it was never going to close, because they had made themselves the enemy.

But truth be told, his parents' weren't the punishments Leo feared the most at that time. Blaine would get mad too, and he was very hard to deal with. Despite constantly repeating that he was his boyfriend and not his father, Blaine was still a man and he would deal with him as a man would do with a fifteen years old kid. Blaine lectured him every time he thought it was necessary for Leo to learn something – and he often believed he was the one appointed to teach him. And when Leo did something really wrong, Blaine would shut down completely. Leo dreaded those times, because Blaine kept him at a distance, almost refusing to speak to him, let alone touch him. Luckily, it didn't happen _that_ often because it was cruel and it almost always ended up with Leo crying. The paternal approach, tho, that Blaine never lost.

Later in his life – more specifically during college – Adam took upon himself the duty of keeping Leo under control. Not that he would actually _punish him_ , but he could be very annoying in his way of pointing it out when Leo was being too reckless, too improper, too stupid or, most of the time, all these things together. As with every other _wannabe educators_ before him, Leo would not listen to him at all, but he would never openly antagonize him either, which was some kind of step forward. He would recognize Adam's protests for what they were, friendly suggestions from a concerned friend. And, despite doing what he wanted anyway, at least he would appreciate Adam's love.

One of the most important case of Adam's unrequited but nonetheless given advice was Cody. Leo saw him at a party, all alone, drawing in a corner, and he instantly fell in love with him. At the time he didn't know it was love, but it was strong anyway, and Leo suddenly couldn't see anything else. Adam was there, he saw it happening and tried to stop it. He really tried, because he knew Cody's story and he knew how devastating Leo could be for him. Leo didn't listen to him of course – he wanted Cody and he had to have him – but things didn't turn out half as bad as Adam had thought. Actually, they went pretty good. Except that Blaine came back after six months and, though unwillingly for the first time in five years of dating, Leo broke up with Cody. It didn't end in tragedy, but Adam hadn't been so wrong anyway.

After Dublin – which became a city Leo doesn't like to remember at all – punishment took another more horrible form. He was like anesthetized, somehow impenetrable to pain and memories from the past. He was happy for two blissful years. And then Blaine was back and then gone again. Leo's mind was so addled at that point that he read as a punishment what was only Blaine's feeble attempt not to destroy his life completely. Unfortunately, destroy his life was exactly what he did. Leo felt betrayed and lost, and he wasn't equipped for the kind of pain that he had kept at bay for so long and was now overwhelming him. He hated Blaine because he hadn't wanted him enough when they broke up in Ireland. He hated him because he didn't stay when he was back again two years later. Leo wanted to forget him and he couldn't live without him.

He started to punish Blaine by devastating himself as much as he could. There was no limit to the drinks he would have, the pills he would pop, the people he would have sex with. The more of it, the better. If there was ever a version of him that Blaine had loved at some point in time, he wanted to destroy it forever, to cancel it until there was nothing left. And he almost did it. By the time Blaine was back – dragged to Lima by his parents and Mrs. Williams, his psychiatrist – Leo was one step away to lose himself in the mess that was his head. He never thought to commit suicide, but he wasn't safe anyway. It was war between them for a long time. Blaine torn between rage, guilt and love. Leo wanting to hurt him and be saved by him at the same time. The punishments Blaine came up with to try and reeducate him – preventing him from going out, screaming at him, scolding him, even being mean to him on purpose – were nothing compared to what they were doing to each other on a daily basis. Yet, they came out of it. Broken and tired, but alive and together.

Now, twenty years after it started, the circle is closed. He's got three children of his own and he finds himself in the position of educating them, giving them punishments when it's needed. And it's not as easy as he thought it would be. Kids can do such a mess, grounding them should be a piece of cake. He should want to ground them forever, lock them somewhere and throw away the key. But he doesn't. He loves them. They are his children. And he doesn't want to hurt them. Not even when he wakes up in the morning and finds out that Logan has drawn a new _Guernica_ on the living room wall. Not when Harper cut a _princess dress_ out of their room's curtains. Not – and that's big and it says at all – when Timmy happened to break one of his action figures playing ball in the house. Go figure!

“They need to be grounded,” Blaine says to him, as they look at what once was their living room and it's now a war scene.

“Can you do that this time?” Leo asks, looking at him with big blue, pleading eyes. It worked when he was little, and it works now too. Apparently, avoiding punishments and avoiding to give them it's one and the same. Blaine sighs and calls their children downstairs. He's got four children, not three.


End file.
